


Life started in a speakeasy

by A_Nobelmonster



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: 1920s, Crossdressing, F/F, Marriage of Convenience, New York, Speakeasies, but real feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 02:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8826847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Nobelmonster/pseuds/A_Nobelmonster
Summary: Life, as pure and effervescent as she came to know started in the balmy tobacco swamp of the speakeasy on the corner of Fourth and Lanchester, With Elizabeth Bennett. The finely coiffed hair styling of an actress and disinterested olive colored eyes to match the martini in her hand.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this was actually my final project for English class believe it or not, though I'm not sure my teacher had sapphic cross-dressing ladies in mind when she assigned it .

Is this how life decrees itself?

That at the hands of our parents they should kill their children and from this form the wretch of the unseeing adult?

then one is to grow up,

Have hoards of children,

Marry them off unhappily,

Die with feigned love and then 

Rinse and repeat?

What if one refused to die such a preordained death. What if one chose happiness?

Ophelia was indeed not the great warrior Achilles but perhaps she could succeed where he hadn’t. Because women and heroes were very similar stories were they not?

A pleasant future did not come easily to either and rarely without strife.

Ophelia would choose her life, though. She would find joy. To try was all she could ask of herself but it was more than her mother or anyone in her life before had,

-

Life had not started when she ran from her father and brother.

Or years prior with her betrothal to Hamlet.

Life, as pure and effervescent as she came to know started in the balmy tobacco swamp of the speakeasy on the corner of Fourth and Lanchester, With Elizabeth Bennett. The finely coiffed hair styling of an actress and disinterested olive colored eyes to match the martini in her hand.

She made everything look effortless, much as Ophelia's mother had made marriage look.

“Ophelia , my love, Marriage is like a dream. You endure until you wake if it is unpleasant and if it nice you count your fortune.”

No mother, she would think to herself. I do not want others to tell I am lucky my husband doesn’t beat me.

No mother, I don’t want to succumb to life like you.

She loved her mother. Of course, Ophelia did though it was also true she has her own thoughts to think. If she had stayed who knows the outcome.

Face down in the cotton covers of a bed or in the water lillies of a ravine surely.

Ophelia had been captured by this life much more easily with “Lizzie's” sardonic grin after she downed her drink. Ophelia followed the column of her throat as Lizzie swallowed trying to hear past the roar of the band warming up and her own thunderous heart.

“Hey doll face, you stickin around?” Her voice was a heavy cement mixture of smooth northern British spiked with New York slang.

Ophelia was helpless to it.

-

Ophelia had barely moved from the spot since. Her soul that was.

Every part of her that had wished for something more as a child was enthralled . The parts of her that wanted and did so desperately took root in the polished tile floors. The sound soaked concrete.

She barely recognized that about herself. That she had the ability to flourish in another place like some species of butterflies do.

It was so easy to live here. Elizabeth and everyone in New York made it like an opium fantasy. .

She knew piano and two weeks after arriving her fingers were on the ivory in absence of Gerald a tall thin man who had owed some men some money and they had come to collect.

Elizabeth sang . Sometimes once a week, Sometimes every other day.

She told Ophelia, who she knew as Oli that her parents were super eager old money types, they were losin’ money fast in their old drafty estate and trying to marry off all their daughters to fix it.

Ma Bennet or Mrs. Bennett had Lizzie going to matchmaking parties and social events until her heels cried. So far the only one to catch a glimpse of poor Lizzie's uninterested heart was a Mr. Darcy.

“He’s got a nice smile but his attitude could melt the color off an automobile.”

And then they didn’t talk about him again after Lizzie lit a cigarillo , not because she was intent on smoking but because of they way she kissed the words away from Ophelia afterward and how she couldn’t help but let them get away.

-

Ophelia had a lot of reason for not wanting to get married. Reasons that made her crop her curled hair close, burn her dresses and call herself a name no one would think to associate with herself.

She could have fought at home beside Hamlet. His return had been imminent upon the king's death but her resolve would have slipped. She would have comforted as expected, she would have let her country's mourning hammer the final nail in her coffin.

Ophelia had inherited her mother's easily manipulated nature like that.

When the king died she knew her window of escape was closing, That when Hamlet returned change would already be set in place.

Running during a time of turmoil shifted the focus from her. No one would be looking at the shadow fleeing over the garden wall , at least not for some time.

Perhaps eventually laertes or Horatio would find her to deliver judgment.

Laertes would be wounded by her action . Call her a stupid silly girl for her aversion to marriage. He would repeat the words of their mother.

He would say that she was overreacting , chastising her selfishness in a time upheaval.

Underneath these words, though she might hear, “ I didn’t want to to go but I wish I was not here to bring you back. “ Because Laertes was a loyal pawn to the throne as their father was be that as it may he was Ophelia's first and foremost.

They were bound by something more sacred than blood or water.

-

As a boy she is a more convincing story of herself than she ever was as Ophelia the girl.

It was the most simply things about her masculine way of dress, like her suspenders that gave off an air that said, “I am in love with life.”

If she was completely honest with who she was now and had been. It probably had something to do with Lizzie too.

Lizzie who’s apathetic guise was interrupted by the way she swayed while she sang.

The pinch of her koal dark brows while reading Hemingway curled into a corner of the club.

The slow sly quirk over her mouth when the tempest of her remaining single sisters entered the club,

Lizzie who knew almost immediately that Ophelia was not the starving artist of a man she dressed herself to look like not caring either way.

Elizabeth Bennet who laid in Ophelia's silk nightgown in the single room apartment over Zeppoli’s Italian Bakery holding her sweating palm as a promise to figure out a better life for both of them.

The very woman who spoke in humid heavy nights of what their life would be like away from their families. Of their own choosing.

“I could read all day. Maybe I’d even be a librarian and you Oli, you could be a florist. Surrounded by big pretty sunflowers that never tell you what you outta say” And for Ophelia who rarely wanted or spoke on her own behalf, she looked to her heart and found it yearning for that life too.

Weeks after this it was Elizabeth’s clever words that once more found a way for Ophelia to stay. It's the evening , they are closing Mrs.Bennets cafe Le Gardiner .

When weeks had seeped into months the older woman had demanded to make Ophelia's acquaintance. Especially when she was told by Elizabeth in a soothing lie that Ophelia was a young man named Oliver looking to audition with a sympathy hall. Lizzie had nearly choked bagel laughing as she recounted the twinkling prospect in her mother's eye.

True to her disposition Mrs.Bennett had fervently , with impressive energy tried her hand at matchmaking the two, unaware of Ophelia's true self. Not that either Ophelia or Elizabeth minded.

Mrs. Bennet called on Ophelia to play jaunty tunes in the sleepy corner of the cafe , to fix a leaking faucet here and and assist in cleaning out the kitchen there.

It was no secret that Ophelia , “Oli” was an immigrant new to the country without much in the way of money but Ophelia liked to think that Mrs. Bennet could see how Lizzie had taken with affection to her and that it meant something.

There were only three weeks of subtle hinting before Mrs. Bennett turned to Ophelia where she leaned against the counter.

“You know, Elizabeth has many handsome suitors.” Ophelia felt it was in her best interest not to talk a lot.

“Her hand won’t be bare forever young man. So if your gonna move you best be getting to it.” Ophelia nodded tugging the page boy cap on her head over reddening ears. She stared at the water rings on the wood surface in front of her as Mrs. Bennet began bustling around the small store once more,

Now in the slowness that was brought in in this part of town when the sun set Elizabeth had an epiphany when thinking of the incident.

“ and i don’t care anymore. I would marry if I could just to get her to stop. I'd marry you if I could-” 

“I…..I would marry you Oli.”

“Oh, Lizzie that's...well that's crazy….” but her body and soul disagreed with enthusiasm.

“More crazy than marrying for money? Or a stranger? Why Oli hasn’t my mum been asking you to marry me for weeks now?”

Here Ophelia stood, with a tentative solution in her hands unable to comprehend how she got to this moment. Elizabeth had since the moment they met made everything a breeze with her clever quick wit in combination with her sharp shooter mouth.

Ophelia had run from home promising the young child she had once been that she would never speak on her life with regret.

Now? Now was a very hard time to speak.

She could only ask, “Are you-you really sure lizzie?”

“ As sure as the sun rising every morning, As sure as the crocus blooming in February.” Elizabeth rewarded Ophelia with a rare and true smile when she placed Ophelia's palm flat over her heart. “As sure as the beat of the music.”

Ophelia felt the roots that had taken ground that first night and they felt like they were building a home when Elizabeth was there.

-

Mrs. Bennet didn’t even cry at Elizabeth's request for a small ceremony with the city clerk. She kissed both Ophelia and Elizabeth on the cheek before sitting in the small gallery,

Before the wedding gown that Elizabeth had dawned on her mother had been appeased by the mere promise of a wedding.

The rings they used were heirlooms of Elizabeth's grandmother Juniper. One a dull gold band accented by a modest princess cut diamond, the other a silver inset with delicate circles of emeralds. The lace capped sleeve that matched her pearl beaded veil had been Junipers as well.

Though either of them had yet to forsake the strangling grasp that was the institution of marriage, Ophelia could not deny the contentment beneath her breastbone. Not when she looked to the radiant light in front of her that she had chosen with her own heart.

That's all either of them had wanted. A choice in how they told their stories.

-

In April when Hamlet and Horatio has arrived as expected they arrived to a young duet of a couple. that, had not been expected.

For several weeks they had written the way Ophelia's parents would remember her in a small cafe with a baby grand piano in the corner.

Hamlet returned to his kingdom with his loyal advisor to console Laertes of his sister unobtainable status. At midday bouquets of baby’s breath and violets were set about the castle in remembrance.

And life was as it should be.

.


End file.
